


Army Proof

by aetataureate



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe: Modern Military, BAMF Bucky Barnes, Disaster Steve Rogers, Eastern European Road Trip, Established Relationship, Humor, Injury Recovery, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Modern Epistolary Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-05 00:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17908400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aetataureate/pseuds/aetataureate
Summary: Despite his recent and unexpected promotion from green recruit to national icon and media darling Captain America, Steve Rogers still lacks the skills and experience necessary to thrive in the Army. First Sergeant Tony Stark has dealt with decades of tomfoolery from his subordinates, but nothing has quite prepared him for the particular brand of chaos that trails in Steve's wake.Steve's team includes at least one competent adult in Sam Wilson, but also contains Clint Barton, a mechanic who cheats at cards and still loses, and Natasha Romanov, their terrifying police escort. Together, the gang must navigate across Eastern Europe without causing Steve’s next major international incident.On the other side of the world, Bucky Barnes is contending with a new reality while doing what he can to keep his accidental hero boyfriend on the path that will eventually lead him home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Well I thought about the Army,_  
>  _Dad said son, you're fucking high._  
>  _And I thought, yeah there's a first for everything,_  
>  _So I took my old man's advice._  
>  “Army,” Ben Folds Five 

Steve had been in Dietersheim for almost a month when Lieutenant Colonel Coulson called him in to his office in the Battalion Operations Center.

“Captain Rogers! Take a seat. Would you like a cookie? Or, technically, it’s a brookie—some kind of hybrid with a brownie. My sister sent them. They’re very good. Would you like one?”

“No, sir, thank you,” Steve said, sitting down gingerly in the spindly office chair. Coulson seemed like a good battalion commander—efficient, motivated, engaged—but he was also one of those cerebral types who had gotten his hands on the report on what Steve had done when the 107th had been captured and analyzed every detail in his spare time. Now he couldn’t quite figure out what balance to strike between fawning over Steve and outranking him.

“Are you sure? Because they really are good. And we do appreciate, you know, we appreciate that you’re here. With me. Us! In Germany. It’s been a pleasure working with you. The guys have gotten a lot out of it.”

Steve had spent the last three and a half weeks being photographed at various command meetings, being photographed repainting the barracks, and being told quite firmly not to touch anything that looked like it might impact the function of an aircraft after an unfortunate incident involving the nose cone of a Chinook and leaning too hard. He wasn’t sure the guys had gotten all that much out of the experience. “Thanks, sir, but I just got back from the dining hall. I appreciate it.”

“Oh.” They sat for a moment. “Anyway. At this point, I’m sure you’re aware that Alpha Strike Battalion is participating in OPERATION WARRIOR SHIELD next month.” The capitals were implied. Alpha Strike was very excited to be participating in Operation Warrior Shield.

Steve nodded seriously. “Yes, sir.” They might as well have hired skywriters to announce their involvement in Operation Warrior Shield. There were privates sitting around painting rocks at Fort Wainwright who knew Alpha Strike Battalion would be participating in Operation Warrior Shield, and no one ever told the people at Fort Wainwright anything.

“We’re talking truly large-scale training exercises. Twenty-five thousand service members from twenty-two allied and partner nations. We’re going to coordinate logistics for units covering over a thousand miles, all the way out to the Black Sea.” Coulson was getting concerningly excited, which was the same amount of excited every field grade officer had gotten when talking about Operation Warrior Shield in Steve’s presence for the last two weeks. “Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, we’ll have folks up in the Baltic region—”

“Yes, sir, I see that,” said Steve, nodding in the direction of the huge, fuck-off map of Eastern Europe hanging behind Coulson’s desk, various routes and countries cheerfully highlighted, color-coded, and pointed to with enormous arrows. Coulson blushed, and Steve amended, “It’s very exciting.”

“Precisely! I thought you would think so. And as such, I’ve had a handful of people from the staff shops throw together a plan that would let you ride along for the first bit of the operation.”

Steve frowned. “That sounds . . . great, sir, but Public Affairs is sending me to Fort Lewis at the beginning of next month, so I have to be in Washington State before the exercises start.”

“Well, so technically, you wouldn’t be along for the actual exercises. You’d just be there for the movement _to_ the exercises. But there’s some really great experience to be gained there,” Coulson explained.

“Sorry, to clarify: I would travel out with the unit, and then before the training exercises begin, I would leave and come back here?” Steve asked.

“Exactly. You’d go as far as Bulgaria. We’re going to have our support battalion actually getting out there in the field, for once. You can mingle with the troops, get a feel for their battle rhythm. Does that make sense?”

It did not make sense, but Steve didn't think that was what Coulson wanted him to say. “Yes, sir, it does, yes, but there will be troops back here in Germany, right? Could I possibly get a feel for their rhythm? They’ve been having me do a lot of public appearances, and I think I could be better utilized by—”

“Sorry, Captain Rogers, let me rephrase. Colonel Fury thinks it would be a great idea for you to be out there with the troops. And then also to conduct a couple of interviews with the Public Affairs Office, maybe get some footage.” Coulson looked vaguely apologetic.

“Ah,” said Steve. “I see.”

“I have,” he pulled a file out of a drawer, and it thumped down on the desk with finality, “some paperwork for you to go over detailing what the photo ops are going to look like. There are a couple briefs in there the outlining the major talking points for Warrior Shield, if you could look them over and get a good grasp on them? Plus the contact information for your liaison at the PAO—she’s a civilian, Ms. Potts. She’s good, I’ve worked with her before.”

Steve opened up the file, rifling through some of the pages. There were some bullet-point memos on the EUCOM letterhead, a business card, a couple of smaller-scale versions of the map behind Coulson’s desk. Steve could see locations marked with the Public Affairs tactical symbol in central Austria and eastern Bulgaria. Most people didn’t know Public Affairs had a tactical symbol. Steve did. The file was making him feel a little better, actually. Someone in the staff shops had put a bunch of work into it, which meant the dancing monkey field trip was pretty much an inevitability. There wasn’t much point in fighting it. There were also some printouts from RyanAir. “Plane tickets?” he asked.

“One. You’ll travel out to Bulgaria with the convoy, but you’re heading back early, so you have to fly commercial. I had Captain Arnold handle the paperwork.” 

Steve nodded. “Thank you, sir. If this is how I can help, I’ll be happy to help.” That wasn’t even a lie, really. The adjutant had had no idea what to do with him when he turned up, so she had him bunking out in an empty barracks at the edge of post. He would be glad to have some company other than an unfortunate silverfish infestation, at least.

Coulson looked grateful he wasn’t going to have order a man who the news called a national hero and whose first-line supervisor called him a insubordinate son of a bitch to do something he thought was stupid. He got up, shook Steve’s hand. “First Sergeant Stark is running the transpo briefing at oh-eight tomorrow. It would probably help for you to be there, maybe run it along with him.”

“Sure, sir, I’ll track him down.”

***

As he was leaving the BOC, Steve saw Wilson heading back from the hangar. Steve waved, and the Staff Sergeant ambled over—he was one of the only Alpha Company NCOs who wasn’t still mad about the nose cone thing.

“Hey sir, how’s it going?” he asked, throwing up a salute. Steve returned it and shrugged.

“Oh, you know. Living the dream. You on duty tonight?”

“Nah, they didn’t need me. I was just doing a last-minute jigsaw puzzle—trying to make everything under the sun fit into one single container. Hard enough without the E4 Mafia hanging over your shoulder trying to convince you if you shift everything around just right, we can fit a gas grill and an inflatable kiddie pool, make a holiday of it.”

Steve laughed. “Speaking of, I’m heading out to Bulgaria with you guys.”

“What? Aren’t you due at Lewis in like two weeks?”

“Yeah, no shit, they’re sending me out with you, having me do a couple of interview type things, and then having me fly back commercial, pack up, and head back to the States, all before the actual training exercises start.” Steve caught the look of distaste on Wilson’s face. “I promise not to swing my elbows around near the helicopters while we’re in a foreign country. Well. Any other foreign countries. That was a one-time thing.”

“It’s not that, sir—you really don’t want to go on this trip, though.”

Steve considered that. “I mean, not really, but needs of the Army, right? Plus, I might as well see Eastern Europe from the air.”

“No, sir, that’s not—do you know why this movement is such a big deal? Why all the Public Affairs people are poking around? We have a full Sustainment Brigade going from Germany to Bulgaria. It’s going to be a massive dedication of time and resources to prove we can supply a whole continent at once. There’s no way we’re just taking a quick flight over. It’s a convoy. We’re _driving_.”

“Oh,” said Steve. “Ah, shit.”

***

That night, Steve texted Bucky from his twin bed in the abandoned barracks, moonlight flooding into the room through the ragged tear in the curtains.

_Steve: babe._

_Bucky: acquaintance_

_Steve: fuck off._  
_Steve: i miss you._  
_Steve: also, i think i might have made a mistake._

_Bucky: i miss you too also you are literally constantly making mistakes what else is new_

“Asshole,” Steve muttered, and used his super strength and reflexes to smash a silverfish making its way up the wall next to his bed. Then he pulled up FaceTime and made an audio call. “Asshole,” he said again as soon as Bucky picked up.

“Good . . . to you too,” Bucky said through static. “You’re coming . . . wanna . . . corner with the . . . ?”

“Yeah,” said Steve, getting up to clear his rucksack off of the desk chair and move it to the corner under the window, where the trickle of WiFi from the neighboring building was the strongest. “Better?” He shifted again. “Better? Can you hear me now?”

“Right there,” said Bucky, through only faint layer of fuzz. “Hi.”

“Hi,” said Steve. “You busy right now?”

“Nah, my appointment’s delayed. I’m in the waiting room.”

“Ah, I’m sorry,” said Steve. “At least you have service.”

“Yeah, I’m glad it’s not Radiology. Their reception is shit and their magazines are terrible. Distract me though, tell me about your mistakes.”

“‘Mistake’ was a strong word,” Steve said. “‘Impromptu involuntary international expedition,’ maybe?”

“Oh my god, are they sending you out on Warrior Shield?” Bucky asked.

“Got it in one. Your boyfriend is heading to Bulgaria.”

“They’re not keeping you an extra month, are they?”

“Nah,” said Steve, spotting another silverfish by the sink, perilously close to where he kept his toothbrush. “Hang on.” He grabbed a shower shoe and ambled over to the other side of the room, delivered swift and terrible retribution, and ambled back. “Sorry, bug thing. Anyway, they’re having me go out there as a PR stunt, basically. I don’t have all of the details yet, but they’re sending me back before the exercises actually start.”

“Oh, that’s not so bad, then,” Bucky said, sounding distracted. “You’ll be back stateside at the same time?”

“Yeah, two weeks. Just under. It’s just—”

“Hey, Stevie, can you hang on a second? They gave me this fucking clipboard to write on and I’m having trouble—”

“Yeah, yeah, take your time.” Steve’s room was quiet, other than the slight hum of the water heater on the other side of the wall. He opened the window to let the breeze in, and killed two more silverfish while he waited for Bucky.

“Back,” Bucky said finally. “It’s just?”

“Huh? Oh. It’s just, I don’t know. It feels like I’m being punished.”

Bucky laughed at him. “That’s because you’re being punished, Steve. You went AWOL. You made a lot of very important people look very bad. You’re lucky it isn’t worse.”

“I know, it’s just, I’m being punished for something I don’t regret. They could send me to the South Pole and I wouldn’t regret it.”

“I know you don’t. I don’t either, obviously. As much as I hate sitting around in waiting rooms like it’s my full-time job, it’s better than the alternative.”

“So then why—”

“Maybe don’t think of it like punishment,” suggested Bucky. “Since that’s clearly driving you crazy. Think of it like penance.”

“But if it’s penance, then shouldn’t I be doing something actually useful?” Steve said, getting up to pace around the room. “It’s just— photo ops and soundbites and painting rec centers, no one needs that! And it’s not what I’m good at. I’m so, so lucky to have what I have, and I can’t just—”

“Stop walking around like . . . I’m trying . . . and I . . . hear you,” Bucky said.

Steve sat back down heavily in his chair in the corner. “I can do so much more than this, Buck.”

“I know. I’ve seen you do it. But this is how the rest of us have to live our lives _all the time_ , Steve. Dealing with the minutiae. We can’t all be action-movie heroes.”

“I don’t need to be an _action-movie hero_ , I just need to be _productive_. Hell, if I could just be where you are, I could—”

“You could what? You could what, Steve? I’m the one with group therapy and appointments with the PT and fucking how-to-be-a-civilian-again paperwork, and _I’m_ bored out of my skull. You’d be climbing the walls. You’d stage another elaborate rescue mission and they’d send you to jail for real this time.”

“I would not,” Steve said hotly.

“Steve, I love you so, so much, you don’t even— I love you, but remember when we were like twelve and you passed out and broke your nose and they made you stay in the hospital while they did blood tests?”

“It’s not fair that my boyfriend remembers my childhood misdeeds. Other people’s boyfriends weren’t there for their childhood misdeeds,” Steve complained.

“Tough luck, baby, you should have dumped me when you had the chance. You broke your wrist trying to climb out the window, you were in the hospital for twice as long as you would have been, and I have photographic evidence. How much longer do you have on your contract?”

“Nine months. Little less,” grumbled Steve.

“Under nine months. Just, go to Bulgaria. Play nice with the other kids. Be _have_. Get out as soon as you possibly can, and we’ll make you a productive member of society again.”

Steve sighed, eyeing another silverfish. This one was on his blanket. “Yeah, okay. I know you’re right. It’s just, I miss you.”

“I miss you too. But I’m okay. Becca’s here, my mom’s here. Dad’s off work this weekend, he’s visiting. I’m getting a lot of reading done. You don’t have to worry as much as you do.”

“I know,” said Steve, chest tight. “It’s just, I love you. And this is forever, for me.”

“You know I don’t want to talk about that on the phone,” Bucky said, softly.

“I know,” said Steve. “But I needed to say it.”

“Okay,” Bucky said. “I love you too. You should get some sleep.”

“I will. I love you.”

“Bye, Steve,” Bucky said, and ended the call.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, Steve was five minutes early to the transportation briefing.

“Where have you been?” asked Tony Stark. It was the first thing that Alpha Company’s First Sergeant had said to him since the Chinook incident. In fact, Steve was pretty sure it was the first thing he had ever said to him—the immediate aftermath of the Chinook incident had tipped Stark right past the “volcano of rage” setting where most NCOs made their living and into “defeated glowering.” “Sir,” he added, in a tone usually reserved for the word _dumbass_.

“Sorry,” said Steve reflexively. “The briefing starts at eight, right?” They were speaking in low tones, but Steve was very aware that he seemed to be the last one to get there. What looked like the better part of a company was milling about the sunlit space, chatting amongst themselves.

“How are you gonna brief the convoy at eight if you show up at seven-fifty-five with zero knowledge of the operation, huh? I’ve been here for half an hour.”

“Sorry,” said Steve again, “I thought . . . you were briefing it?”

“Well, I am _now_ ,” said Stark, shoving a three-ring binder into Steve’s hands. Much louder, he continued, “Alpha Company listen up! Everybody horseshoe it up around the terrain model.” The general clamor died down, and the assembled group formed a loose semicircle around the elaborate tableau spread across the floor. 

Steve’s experience with terrain models was limited to hastily constructed mounds of dirt and rocks, with maybe a stick to emphasize a particularly important feature. His experience with planning operations in general was, in fact, limited. The scene in front of him was an elaborate confection of paper and string, ten meters wide, complete with cardboard mountains, national boundaries, a north-seeking arrow, and unit symbols that that been cut out, laminated, and stuck into little plastic board game stands. It was clearly the product of a planning bonanza. Steve peeked into the binder (three inches, filled to bursting), and was greeted by some sort of spreadsheet. It had a lot of numbers on it. He snapped the binder shut again.

“Okay, we got a lot of moving parts here, so listen up.” Stark launched into a speech punctuated by color commentary on the captive audience. He oriented everyone to the model, confiscated a pack of chewing gum, familiarized the group with major terrain features, insulted three haircuts, and defined a bevy of acronyms Steve had never heard before. He was also pointing maniacally with a big wooden stick, and a frazzled-looking private was rushing back and forth, trying simultaneously to stay out of the way, move the unit symbols along the primary, alternate, and contingency routes, keep up with the furious pace of the briefing, and avoid being whacked over the head.

“We’ll be stopping overnight at the CSCs—that’s Convoy, Support, Centers—one per country, in Germany, here, Austria, here, Hungary—Hogan, chill out with that, you’re going to knock over the Carpathians and you put second platoon in the Adriatic—Hungary here, Romania here, and Bulgaria here.” 

It dawned on Steve that everyone else in the room was furiously scribbling down details in their notebooks. Steve had a notebook. He even had a pen. It was possible he should be writing things down. He shifted to access his cargo pocket, and the binder made a daring escape over this left elbow. There was a loud _thwap_ , _click_ , and _whoosh_ , and then dozens of pages were spread across the floor. 

For the first time, Stark paused.

“In case of _foolish accidents_ ,” he continued, “we have a MEDEVAC coverage zone in Romania, marked by the circles with the word MEDEVAC. Hogan, why aren’t we indicating the circles. Yup, those. Don’t be surprised when you see helicopters overhead, those are ours, feel free to wave hello. Maximoff, are you _sleeping_ during my brief?”

After twenty more minutes of declamation, including an interlude where Steve, trying to gather up the spilled papers as quietly as humanly possible, ended up colliding with Hogan and dragging the Danube off the map, Stark seemed about ready to wrap up. “I know everybody wants to ride with their buddies. But you’ve all already been assigned to vehicles based on who’s licensed to drive what, and I’m not changing up the chalks no matter what, so don’t even ask. Captain Rogers has the list—everyone take a look before you run off. Sir,” he said, grinning, “it’s on page seventeen of the briefing packet. If you’re a chalk leader, I need to see you in the back. Everyone else, dismissed.”

Steve was surrounded by a horde of chattering soldiers as he flipped furiously through the deconstructed briefing packet in search of the former page seventeen. He dragged it out from the bottom of the stack, and it was immediately absorbed into the congregation, passing from hand to hand as people cried out in excitement or disappointment. When the amassed crowd finally dispersed, Steve got a chance to examine the list. He scanned it rapidly, finding his name about halfway down.

_CHALK 12_  
_VEH: HMMWV_  
_CALL SIGN: MAIN BODY 1-6_  
_PAX: Barton, C F SGT_  
_Rogers, S G CPT_  
_Stark, A E 1SG (chalk leader)_  
_Wilson, S T SSG_

Steve let out a sharp breath at the prospect of being cooped up in a humvee for five days with Stark, A E 1SG. At least he would have Wilson. He looked up from the list and was startled to find a blond man with a broken nose grinning at him.

“I don’t think we’ve been introduced,” he said. “I’m Sergeant Barton.”

“Oh,” said Steve, extending his hand, “we’re riding together. I’m Captain Rogers.”

“I know,” said Barton. He was still grinning. Steve was slightly unnerved.

“So, are you and Wilson both parachute riggers, or . . .”

“Naw,” said Barton. “Total respect for those guys, but I don’t have the focus. I fix shit that’s going to stay solidly on the ground. I’m a wheeled vehicle mechanic.”

“So you’re going to be an important guy to have around on the road, huh?” Steve asked, and Barton laughed.

“Not as important as you, I think. Are you really _the_ Captain America?”

Steve paused. “Well, I guess, that depends on what you mean,” he said, flatly.

Barton snorted and barrelled on. “I mean, did you really get booted out of your recruiter’s office and immediately get picked up on the street for a super-secret science experiment, and—”

“It sounds like you already know my life story,” said Steve.

“I read the profile in the Washington Post.”

“Ah,” Steve said. “I didn’t.”

“Plus, we were all following the Army Times coverage, when there was a whole thing over whether or not you did like seventeen crimes? You’re a controversial guy, sir.”

“Technically, it was only eleven crimes,” Steve offered hesitantly. “I’m guessing you’re not one of those people who thinks the court martial should have gone a different way?”

Barton grinned broadly. “Sir, from where I’m standing, the only criminal I see is whoever’s letting you languish in the Public Affairs Office.” Steve huffed a laugh and headed out the door, Barton at his heels. “Seriously, can I see your Distinguished Service Cross? Can you pick up something really heavy over your head for me? Like a truck maybe?” He gasped. “If you held on to a helicopter that was taking off do you think it would just hang there like a balloon?”

“Sergeant Barton?”

“Yeah?”

“Fuck off?”

Barton snapped a sharp salute. “Yes, sir!” he chirped, and trotted off in the direction of the motorpool. Steve shook his head, and reached into his pocket for his phone.

_Steve: how’s walter reed?_

_Bucky: its walter reed its a hospital  
Bucky: hows wherever_

_Steve: dietersheim  
Steve: i definitely made a tactical error._

_Bucky: do tell_

_Steve: 1400 mile convoy with 53 soldiers in 22 vehicles across 5 countries.  
Steve: attachments: 1 steve rogers._

_Bucky: ahahhaaha_  
_Bucky: thats gonna be a shitshow_  
_Bucky: do you have a phone plan thatll cover this little expedition_

Steve frowned. He did not have a phone plan that would cover this expedition. His phone plan was the WiFi hotspots scattered around the base.

_Bucky: theres no way you have a phone plan im buying you a phone plan_

_Steve: you’re a really excellent boyfriend._

_Bucky: im a really excellent nco. none of my guys go out without proper supplies_

_Steve: beans, bullets, bandages, and bdata plans?_

_Bucky: aslfhfdsjkfsadk  
Bucky: when do you leave and what countries are involved and how many days do you need_

_Steve: god, i love you._

***

On the morning the convoy was set to depart, Steve was outside the motorpool by 0330. The vehicles were already staged on the road outside, the big FMTVs laden with cargo and towering over the humvees like elephants in a herd of dairy cows. The lead vehicle was adorned with a sign, big block letters legible in the orange glow of the streetlamps:

_CONVOY FOLLOWS_  
_KONVOI FOLGT_  
_конвой следует_

Steve made his way from the front of the line backwards, trying to find his place in the order of march. The further he went, the larger the trucks got, like walking into a deep forest—he spotted the fueler and the wrecker looming all the way at the rear. Steve’s humvee was sandwiched between a truck dragging a water tank (optimistically camouflaged in pre-Desert-Storm black, brown, and green paint, _POTABLE WATER ONLY_ stencilled on the back) and something the size of a sperm whale that Steve didn’t even recognize.

Steve peered dubiously into his temporary home. It was one of the old soft-shell humvees, protected from the outside world by fabric doors held shut by the miracles of engineering usually reserved for securing the entrances to Port-a-Potties, zip-up plastic windows drooping sadly out of their frames. A stack of ASIP radios was mounted on the passenger’s side, and a small mountain of gear had already collected in the middle of the back seat. Steve circled around to the back to drop off his flight bag, lifted up a tarp, and discovered eight cases of MREs.

“Delicious,” he muttered. He tossed his bag in, secured the back, and went to join the rest of the group.

The group turned out to be clustered around what looked like a normal squadcar, something Steve would have seen at home in New York, Cyrillic lettering in place of the word _POLICE_. There was a redheaded woman standing on the hood. She had a holstered pistol in place of the rifle everyone else seemed to be carrying. On closer inspection, Steve realized his compatriots were holding dummy rifles, some cobbled together from decommissioned parts, the rest plastic through and through. As he was standing there gawking, Wilson came up and tapped him on the shoulder, handing him one of the fake weapons.

“Picked this up for you,” he said, and Steve shot him a grateful smile.

“Okay everybody listen up!” Stark’s voice came floating up from somewhere in the crowd. Even with his height advantage, it took Steve a few moments to get eyes on him. As the chatter died down, Stark made as if to climb up alongside the woman. She made a harsh sound in the back of her throat, and the First Sergeant quickly returned both his feet to solid ground.

“This,” he said, pointing upwards, “Is Sergeant Romanoff. She’s our Bulgarian military police escort, so take your cues from her, and we’ll all get where we’re going in one piece. Sergeant Romanoff, you want to introduce yourself?”

Romanoff looked out at the sea of American faces like a coroner surveying a crime scene, what may have once been disgust faded by professional experience into boredom. “I will not let you get killed,” she said. “But I will let you get lost. Pay attention. Any questions.” There were no questions. She swung down from the top of the vehicle, ignoring the hand a private held out for her hopefully in favor of using the top of Barton’s head for balance. Barton had the dopey grin of a middle schooler who had just been asked to a Sadie Hawkins dance.

“Okay!” said Stark. “That was great, thank you, Bulgaria. Okay, before we head out, safety brief! No, no groaning, Watson, unless you want to do the safety brief. At all times, we’re gonna be in uniform, and the uniform is helmet, gloves, eyepro, and IBA. Yes, eyepro and IBA, Stacy. Are you gonna need eye protection and body armor? Probably no! Is it going to be hot as the devil’s asscrack? Definitely yes! Do I care at all? You guessed it, no! Train like you fight, hooah?”

Steve would think that Stark was in rare form, except it seemed to be his default form. The man was a virtuoso of safety briefs, tearing through the formation like a tornado of personal insults and worst-case scenarios. Finally, he seemed to be winding down, a conductor in the last movement of a symphony. 

“Keep your buddies accountable. If you’re out there looking like a soup sandwich, then I look bad, and then the Army looks bad, and then America looks bad. You hear me, Leeds? Do you want America to look bad? Fix your chin strap, what’s rule number one?”

“Always look cool,” a private mumbled unhappily from the front.

“And what’s rule number two? Everybody.”

“Don’t get lost,” the group chorused.

“And if you get lost . . .”

“See rule one.” 

“Excellent. Fall out.”


	3. Chapter 3

The convoy wound its way out of the front gate just as the sun began streaking red over the horizon. Steve, scrunched up in the back between a pile of rucksacks and the door, knees carefully placed to avoid poking Wilson in the kidneys through the driver’s seat, snapped a photo to send to Bucky.

_Steve: phone plan appears to be working. sunrise is lovely this morning._

A loud thump startled him out of his reverie, and the radio crackled to life.

“ _Main Body 1-6, this is Charlie 2-7. You lost something out the back, over._ ”

“Who the _fuck_ was the last person to load their shit?” Stark yelled, grabbing for the hand mike.

“Um,” said Steve.

“It probably doesn’t matter,” said Barton, “since we’re going the wrong way.”

“Christ,” said Stark. “Charlie 4-2, this is Main Body 1-6—”

Steve’s phone buzzed.

_Bucky: lovely lovely_   
_Bucky: how far along are you guys_

_Steve: approximately negative 2 miles._

The next message was row upon row of laughing faces.

***

The thing that had fallen out of the back of the humvee was actually several things. Steve played an unhappy game of chicken with the rest of the trucks as he gathered up the MRE cases scattered across the surface of the Autobahn, Wilson stopped in the middle of the road so that Stark could get out and direct the convoy through a painfully wide U-turn. He had some suggestions for what the _U_ could stand for that Steve had never heard before, and Steve was there when James Buchanan Barnes discovered swear words.

After eleven more hours of driving in generally the right direction, they made it to the first Convoy Support Center, just short of the Austrian border. It wasn’t much to look at. A gravel path had taken them off the main road and to a large clearing in a forest that Steve suspected would be creepy come nightfall. On one side was a long white tent, and on the other, a row of Port-a-Potties. The entire center of the clearing was given over to a temporary motorpool, and Barton hopped out of the vehicle to join the handful of mechanics left behind by vanguard, hanging around the dirt lot and judgmentally eyeing soldiers who slammed doors or forgot to chock their tires.

Steve ducked into the tent to drop off his bag, tossing it onto one of the cots in the near corner. There were far more cots than their section of the convoy could possibly occupy—stretching off in parallel rows, they looked ready to accommodate the entire battalion, not just half of Alpha Company, a couple of guys from Charlie, and Steve. He wandered across to the other side of the CSC to relieve himself. The first Port-a-Potty he poked his head into rather conspicuously lacked a toilet. There was a tiny drain on the floor. Steve peered into it. Was he supposed to pee into the drain? He was a pretty good shot, but his aim wasn’t quite that good. Raising himself back up to his standard eye level, he came face to face with a showerhead.

“Huh,” said Steve. He took a step back, out of the plastic box. “I think this is a shower.” One of the specialists emerged from the neighboring plastic box just in time to see him talk to himself. Hers seemed to house an actual toilet. “Port-a-Shower,” Steve told her, and pointed, for clarity. The specialist gave him a strange look and scurried away. Steve decided to give up on the whole exercise and head back to the humvee to see if Wilson needed a hand. Instead, he came upon Stark aggressively re-capping a Sharpie.

“Sir!” he said. “You want to let the guys know as soon as they finish maintenance on these trucks, they need to come find me for an SI check? Weapons, radios, and ID card. I’m gonna need to see the serial numbers on those first two.” Then, slower: “The _serial number_ is how we know who has the _right equipment_. It’s on the _side_ next to the—”

“I know what a sensitive items check is,” said Steve irritably.

“Terrific work, sir. Accountability, then hygiene, then chow. Oh, and by the way?” Steve hated the way he said _oh, and by the way_. “I’ve labelled our MREs. For clarity, you know, just in case there’s another incident.” With that, Stark walked away. If he hadn’t been wearing combat boots, Steve would have called it a flounce.

With a good deal of trepidation, Steve turned to the boxes of MREs. He seemed to recall their shells of thick cardboard and plastic strapping surviving the fall from the truck, but now they appeared to have been sliced open, the tops folded back down. Steve quickly located his cases, on which _IF FOUND, PLEASE RETURN TO CAPTAIN AMERICA_ had been written in thick, black ink.

His sense of uneasiness building, Steve flipped open the first case and pulled out the top MRE. A familiar, cheerful label greeted him.

_**MENU 4** _   
_PORK SAUSAGE_   
_WITH GRAVY_

“Oh, fuck,” said Steve. He grabbed the next one.

_**MENU 4** _   
_PORK SAUSAGE_   
_WITH GRAVY_

“Mother of fuck,” Steve said.

_**MENU 4** _   
_PORK SAUSAGE_   
_WITH GRAVY_

_**MENU 4** _   
_PORK SAUSAGE_   
_WITH GRAVY_

_**MENU 19** _   
_BEEF PATTY,_   
_JALAPENO PEPPER JACK_

“Whoa,” said Barton from over Steve’s shoulder. “Those are some rat-fucked MREs.”

“What makes you think that?” Steve asked, more bitterly than he intended.

“He must have run out of pork sausage,” said Wilson, reaching over Steve’s other shoulder for the Beef Patty, Jalapeno Pepper Jack. “That’s rough, sir.”

“Rough?” said Steve. “Why would it be rough. These were Warfighter Recommended, Warfighter Tested, Warfighter Approved. TM. Says so right on the label.”

“Good sport,” said Wilson.

“Hey, why are you all wet?” asked Barton. Wilson was dripping on the cardboard.

“Forgot my towel,” said Wilson.

“Yeah, but why are you _wet_.”

“Port-a-Shower,” said Wilson, jabbing in the general direction with his thumb.

“That’s what I said!” said Steve.

***

_Steve: i had such a weird day._

_Bucky: seems to me that comes part and parcel with being such a weird person_

***

Early the next morning, the convoy crossed the border into Austria.

Well, if you wanted to get technical about it, which apparently First Sergeant Stark did, most of the convoy crossed the border into Austria. _Some_ of the convoy remained firmly on German soil. That portion of the convoy was the reason Stark was screaming bloody murder into his cell phone.

“Oh, really? There’s no sign? There’s no sign at all? Then how, pray tell, did you find the payphone in the first place?” There was rather an unpleasant pause. “Oh, it’s in _German_. Well then it must be _hopeless_. _God_ forbid you _ask_ someone. We _won_ World War II, everybody in that adorable fucking town probably _speaks English_! Yeah, well there’s the first good idea you’ve had all day. You do that. You do that, I’ll wait.”

Steve, Wilson, and Barton were all sitting quietly through the First Sergeant’s bout of apoplexia, politely pretending some poor private’s international evisceration wasn’t happening before their very ears. This required Steve’s absolute straightest face ( _so, not straight at all_ , Bucky’s voice chimed from somewhere in his hindbrain). They were all pulled over on the side of the road, without even the the rumble of the engines as a distraction. Steve’s phone chimed, and he dove for it.

_Bucky: hows it going_

“What do you mean, who do you say you are. _You’re a post-operative brain donor, is who you are!_ ” Stark explodes. “Uh huh, nearest border crossing.”

_Steve: not great._

_Bucky: details_

“ _If you do not thank the old woman with the map, so help me god, I will wait until this rotation is over, then I will find out where you live, and then I will come into your home and murder you in your sleep_ ,” Stark yelled into the phone, then immediately hung up. “ _Christ_. They’re ten clicks out from the border, they’ll catch up to us during the photo op.” He was jabbing at various buttons on the radio with a fierceness Steve associated with a maladapted eight-year-old playing whack-a-mole.

_Steve: we’re 40k from the austrian border. HEMMT is 10k from the austrian border._   
_Steve: 10k in the opposite direction._

_Bucky: sa;ldfkjdgjsajkgd_

_Steve: it’s not funny, we lost the HEMMT!_   
_Steve: i don’t even know what a HEMMT is and we lost it!_

_Bucky: i know thats what makes it so funny_   
_Bucky: wtf are they doing back there_

_Steve: apparently their antifreeze(?) overheated(?)_   
_Steve: i think this is ironic somehow._

_Bucky: you def have that wrong and i love you for it_

At some point Stark had finished spitting instructions into the radio, and Wilson pulled out cautiously onto the highway. Steve put his phone away, but not before rejecting his instinctive mistrust of emojis in favor of carefully selecting a heart.

***

The HEMMT did, in fact, catch up to them during the photo op. It turned out to be an extra-big truck, the cab of which looked vaguely like something out of Star Wars. The driver and truck commander hopped down to a slow clap from the rest of the convoy, who were clustered in the meager shade offered by scrubby trees ringing the dirt lot. Steve looked at them longingly, fiddling with the microphone clipped to the collar of his blouse.

“Hands off the mic, Captain Rogers, or we’re going to have to test the levels again.” Ms. Potts’ voice was pleasant, but it carried an undercurrent of threat. She knew precisely how badly Steve wanted not to test the levels again.

“We’re gonna need to run it from the top,” one of her assistants called out. “Background noise.”

“Are my guys bothering you? Do I need to shut ‘em up? Because I can shut ‘em up for you,” Stark said. He’d been hovering in the vicinity since the Public Affairs team showed up, which was annoying, but worth it for the slack-jawed look on the First Sergeant’s face when Ms. Potts had stepped out of the car, said “Tony! Great to see you again,” and kissed him on the cheek.

“Nah, just the engine was too loud,” the assistant replied.

Stark stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. “ _Hey!_ No more engines should be running until Ms. Potts and her team get this thing done, you hear me?”

“Thank you, Tony,” Ms. Potts said.

“Not a problem. Let me know if your guys need help. With holding stuff, or carrying stuff, or whatever. The camera stuff, they’re useless, but carrying? We can carry.”

“I’ll be sure to. Captain Rogers, could you look back this way, please?” 

Steve squinted in the direction of Ms. Potts, whom he could not actually see. The sun was maybe fifteen degrees above her head, and seemed glaring at him personally. He had been told this was his best lighting. He wouldn’t have guessed his best lighting was so sweaty.

“There we go. Now try not to look like you’re doing the visual equivalent of sucking on a lemon. Try. Try a little harder. Okay, and we’re rolling . . .”

It took Steve seven more takes to pronounce the phrase “highlight deterrence capabilities of allied and partnered nations and enhance joint and combined interoperability across a variety of mission sets.” He kept tripping over his own tongue, forgetting his lines, or pulling a face halfway through that made it eminently clear what he thought of the entire interview process. On that last one, Stark had kicked a tire and shouted, “Come on!” then, “Sorry,” when Ms. Potts had quelled his anger with a look. Steve was going to have to ask her to teach him that one.

By the time they were finished-finished, with an embarrassing number of photos snapped of Steve faux-candidly chatting with the joes, sitting behind the wheel of a truck, and nodding sagely, carefully holding a straight face while Barton pointed to various parts of the engine and graphically detailed their correlations to human anatomy, the sun had dipped down to skim the horizon. First Sergeant Stark, who waved a tender farewell to the Public Affairs people before returning to the warpath with renewed vigor, and the soldiers that had spent the afternoon smoking and joking were sent scattering back to the trucks.

***

They got on the road just fine, but the problem was, they were still a few hours out from the next CSC. A few hours, it turned out, was plenty of time for the occupants of the lead vehicle to have what Stark termed a “complete cerebral malfunction,” make a series of unfortunate wrong turns, and get the entire convoy hopelessly, possibly even irrevocably, lost.

“You know what they say,” said Wilson, engaging the parking brake. He’d been blasting heavy metal over the Bluetooth speaker for the last ninety minutes in an attempt to stay awake, but had turned it down out of respect for the sleepy suburban neighborhood they now found themselves in. “Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.”

“Oh, so now you knew something was wrong the whole time,” said Barton.

“I did when we started going over those fucking bucolic wooden bridges! I’m just saying, if we hadn’t rushed out of the last checkpoint . . .”

“It would behoove you,” interrupted Stark, “to shut the fuck up while I look at the map.” 

Wilson shut up. Steve looked out the window. This was a nice neighborhood. A lot nicer than where Steve had grown up. There was a tiny robot puttering around the nearest yard, like a Roomba but for cutting grass. It clashed with the Epcot Germany vibes of the rest of the town.

“People are going to think we’re invading,” Steve said.

“Shut up!”

Steve looked out the window again. There was a man peering suspiciously out from behind his curtains. “They definitely think we’re invading,” he muttered.

Barton yawned enormously. “I think we should ask Natasha for help,” he said. Then he yawned again. The man could unhinge his jaw like a snake.

“Who the fuck is Natasha?”

“Natasha.” The rest of the humvee blinked at him. “The police escort? I know she said she wouldn’t help, but I think if we really need it, she’ll help.”

Stark appeared to consider it. _Natasha?_ Wilson mouthed wordlessly at Steve, who shrugged.

“I am going to talk to Sergeant Romanoff,” Stark announced finally, “Then we’re going to get moving. I’m going to direct traffic out of here. As soon as you pass that narrow intersection, pull over and wait for me.”

“Roger,” said Wilson, and Stark hopped out and slammed the door.

Five minutes after that, the convoy started inching its way forward. Ten minutes later, the laborious process of turning massive trucks around in the tight streets was complete. They passed Stark, pinwheeling his arms wildly like a third base coach. Barton kept up a constant stream of babble for Wilson to focus on. Wilson had his eyes on the truck ahead of them, nodding along. Steve thought about nothing at all, and also, Bucky. Seventeen minutes after that, he sat bolt upright in his seat.

“Holy fuck,” he said. “We forgot the First Sergeant.”

***

_Bucky: you did NOT you are FUCKING with me_

_Steve: we did._

_Bucky: aHAHAHAAHAAHAHAHAHAAAAHAA_   
_Bucky: you fucking LEFT HIM THERE OH MY GOD_   
_Bucky: if you were anywhere but an adorable quaint village this would be a disaster and i would actually be furious but as is ive decided its funny_   
_Bucky: you are SO COMPLETELY DEAD he is going to EVISCERATE you_

_Steve: there’s a technically still a possibility he might not eviscerate us._

_Bucky: he is absolutely going to eviscerate you, i know he is_   
_Bucky: its what i would have done_

***

They arrived at the CSC around sunrise, the rest of the drive having been spent in a stormy silence. Stark declared a six hour rest period, and made it eminently clear no one was to speak to him for the duration, or, if they could help it, for the rest of eternity. Wilson was standing over by the Port-a-Potties, gazing east at the watercolors flooding up into the sky. Steve sidled over to him.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

Wilson considered it, rolling a crick out of his neck. “It’s just,” he said, and paused. “We’re not even halfway there yet. How sad is that?”


	4. Chapter 4

The whole convoy gathered in front of the line of vehicles for the daily briefing from Stark. Steve was at the back of the formation, not paying attention with the focused air of someone who wants to look like they aren’t _not_ paying attention. Stark was rolling through the usual safety brief with gusto.

“Finally,” Stark said, punctuating his speech with choppy gestures. “Captain Rogers is Convoy Commander for the day, so take all direction from him. I’m gonna be up front with the lead vehicle—yeah, yeah, I see that look, y’all gonna have to cut the bullshit for a whole day, get over it—so don’t go bothering me with your questions. Sir, got anything to add?”

 _Captain Rogers_ , Steve thought. _That’s my name_. A moment later, he realized everyone had turned around to look at him.

“Yeah,” said Steve, who did not actually have anything. He walked around to the front of the formation to buy some time. Everyone was still looking at him. “Uh, just to piggyback off what First Sergeant said,” he began, and immediately hated himself. “Um. Remember, safety first.” Barton was actively laughing at him. “Drink water. If you’re too tired to drive, let someone know and we can switch you out.” He looked back at Stark, who had a barely-contained expression of glee, and looked entirely unlikely to take back over the briefing. “Let’s be ready to roll in ten.” The formation was still standing there. Steve wondered for a long moment what they were waiting for. “Oh. Uh, fall out.”

Stark pulled a binder out of his assault pack and slapped it into Steve’s hands as the gravel lot began to fill with voices. Soldiers’ chatter rose up over the sound of them filling up on water, loading rucksacks into the trucks, slamming doors and running maintenance checks.

Five minutes later, Steve was sitting in the passenger seat of the humvee. The order of march was written in dry erase marker on the windshield. Steve stared at the list of call signs, vehicle types, and headcounts unrolling in front of him. _Main Body 1-6_ was precisely halfway down the list, circled in blue. The hand mike was clutched in his left fist.

“Hey sir, you got this.” Wilson was leaning in towards him from the driver’s seat. His voice was just loud enough to be clear over the engine. “We’re ready when you are.”

Steve nodded gratefully. He brought the mike up to his face, skimming the list again for the call sign of of the lead vehicle. He pressed the button.

“Charlie 4-2, this is Main Body 1-6. You all up, over?”

“ _Affirmative, Main Body 1-6. Over._ ”

“Roger, Charlie 4-2. Move out. Main Body 1-6 out.”

Wilson pounded him on the shoulder. “Not so bad being in charge, huh?”

Steve flashed him a grin. “Could be worse. Plus it’s a straight shot through Hungary—no turns, short day. We might even get to sleep while it’s dark out.”

***

Steve’s dream of reestablishing a diurnal cycle died in just about the center of the country. The accident ahead of them had apparently involved a chemical spill and a gas leak, because picking one or the other would have been too quotidian. Steve directed the convoy into a rest stop where they could all fit end-to-end, and after a short conference with Romanoff, decided not to fight traffic with the big trucks, particularly the wrecker and the fueler. Stark, temporarily forgetting Steve was in charge in his enthusiasm, assembled everyone together and reiterated The Rules. 

The Rules were mission-critical, if Not Getting Your Dumb Face Put On Social Media And Becoming An Eternal Embarrassment To The United States Army could be considered a mission. As such, they had been given five full minutes of First Sergeant’s time during the initial transportation briefing. They ranged from standard (Report Suspicious Behavior Or The Terrorists Will Win) to seemingly obvious (Don’t Piss On The Side Of The Road And Get Your Dick Pics In The News) to downright annoying (No Unauthorized Food, God Invented MREs For A Reason). After recitation of The Rules was complete, Stark dispersed everyone back to their vehicles, and there was nothing to do but wait.

“Man, I really have to pee,” said Wilson. “I can’t believe we’re not allowed to use the rest stop bathroom.”

“Me either,” Steve, who had also temporarily forgotten he was in charge, grumbled. He gazed through the window at the shining displays of packaged apple slices and old baloney sandwiches. He had eaten nothing but pork sausage and gravy MREs for three days, and his digestive system was starting to take offense. “Fuckin’ rules.”

“Then pee,” said Barton. “You have a water bottle.”

“Not in front of her,” Wilson said, jerking his head towards Romanoff. She was in the right side of the back seat, Barton pushed over to the center, their mountain of gear pushed to the far left. Steve wasn’t sure what she was doing there. Her patrol car would have had more room—as it was, her legs and Barton’s were tangled together in the small space. It didn’t look particularly comfortable.

“No problem for me. But I am thinking The Rules are not fair to the women, no? No using indoor bathroom, no using outdoors in front of civilians, bottle is not choice. We do what, hold in pee forever?”

“Hey, yeah!” said Steve. “The Rules _are_ unfair to women. Give me five minutes.”

Five minutes and one vigorous lecture later, The Rules had fallen. There had been a domino effect. Letting women use the bathroom meant letting men use the bathroom, which meant they were hogging all the bathrooms, which meant it was only polite to buy something, which meant delicious, delicious, non-vacuum-packed snacks. Half the convoy was lined up either outside the bathroom or behind the counter, where a woman who looked simultaneously bored and overwhelmed was selling sandwiches rapid-fire. The other, unluckier half of the convoy was leaning out the windows of the trucks, shouting out orders or for their buddies to hurry it the fuck up.

Steve, who didn’t know much, but who knew it was important for leaders to eat last, waited very patiently and calmly for everyone else to be settled back into the trucks before making an undignified rush to the bathroom. He went up to the door and knocked, politely but urgently.

“ _Igen_?” someone answered from inside. _Damn, fuck, shit_ , Steve thought, but then the door opened. A woman was standing there. Steve looked at her. She looked at him.

“ _Mit akarsz_?” she said.

“Sorry?” Steve looked furiously between the bathroom doors. Maybe in Hungary, the symbols were reversed and the little triangle skirt dude was a man. Maybe in Hungary, knocking was intolerably rude. The door said _urak_ , what the hell did _urak_ mean?

“ _Mit akarsz_?”

“Sorry, I, uh, no Hungarian? I don’t speak Hungarian.”

“ _Jézus Krisztus. Amerikaiak_ ,” the woman said, and went back into the bathroom.

“What?” said Steve, staring at the door. He bounced on his toes a little. He still had to pee. The woman didn’t come out for another ten minutes.

***

When Steve got back to the truck, he leaned on the driver’s side door to talk to Wilson, who was sulking.

“I just had the weirdest interaction in the bathroom,” Steve said.

“Somebody took my fucking gloves,” Wilson said. “I left them right here on the dash and now they’re gone.”

“Oh,” said Steve. He waited for Wilson to ask about the bathroom, but he didn’t. “It . . . wasn’t me?”

“I know it wasn’t you, you’re Captain America, why would you take my gloves?”

“Did you check the ground?” Steve asked, and Wilson snorted.

“They’re not on the ground, someone _took_ them. Those were my nice gloves.”

“Sorry,” said Steve. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Sure,” said Wilson, and rolled his eyes. If even Wilson was getting snippy, the tactical pause the convoy had taken was stretching on too long.

***

An hour and a half later, their tactical position was unchanged, though boredom levels had reached unprecedented highs. Steve tried unsuccessfully to tune out his compatriots’ attempts at distraction.

“That tree?” Barton asked, for the ninth time.

“No.”

“That tree?”

“Nope.”

“That— man, Wilson, fuck you, you can’t make me guess _exactly_ which tree is the ‘something green.’ That’s not how I Spy works. I figured out it was a tree, give me my point.”

“No.”

“I get a point, it’s the rules of I Spy! Captain Rogers, tell Sergeant Wilson I get a point.”

“I Spy doesn’t have points,” Steve said, blinking blearily against the sun, a headache starting to build, “but if it did, you would definitely need to find the specific tree. The concept of a tree is worth like, a quarter-point, _maybe_.”

“Fine. Wilson, give me my quarter-point.”

“You may have an eighth of a point,” said Wilson generously, his head tilted back against the seat, helmet askew, eyes closed against the world.

“Hell yeah. Okay, I spy with my little eye, something r—”

“It’s Romanoff,” Wilson said.

“No it isn’t! Not this time!”

“It’s Romanoff’s hair.”

“Damn it,” said Barton.

“Ah, young love,” Steve murmured, half-watching a private outside the windshield fumble his canteen and spill a quart of water into the dirt, then look stricken.

“There’s like, a ninety percent chance I’m older than you,” Barton said. “And listen, she’s so pretty. I bet if she murdered me no one would find the body.” He seemed to relish the prospect.

“Oh yeah, I know the type,” said Sam. “Except she dumped me. Ten days into this rotation, can you believe that? Although I’m glad it was now, I guess. If she’s not cut out for me spending three months in Germany, she’s sure as hell not cut out for me spending another year in Afghanistan.”

“Yeah,” Steve said absently. “That’s hard from both sides of it.”

“Right, that _guy_ ,” Barton interjected. “Are y’all really like, together-together?”

“My boyfriend,” said Steve, pausing in case of a reaction. There wasn’t one. “We’re together-together.”

“How long?” Wilson asked.

“How long has he been my boyfriend? Shit, ten years, eleven? We don’t really have a solid start date for it,” Steve said.

Wilson whistled low. “That’s a long damn time.”

“Long enough to drive each other crazy and back again,” Steve said.

“Is it weird now, though?” Barton asked.

“Is what weird?”

“I mean, that photo of you two won a Pulitzer. That doctor won a Nobel Prize. I’d think it’d be weird.”

Steve thought about it. “I mean, yes,” he said. “Of course it’s weird. It’s different. _I’m_ different. But it’s not as weird as not having him would have been, you know? I think about it every day, all this Captain America shit. And every day, it just seems like the only thing I could have possibly done.”

“True love is a powerful motivator,” Wilson said, teasing. Barton looked slightly wistful.

“Not to sound like a Disney princess,” said Steve, “but it kind of is. And it turns out it can also overcome a lot of not having any idea what the hell you’re doing.”

Wilson squinted at him, then burst out laughing. “Man, the stories are actually true, aren’t they? You really just sprang fully-formed into being and got after it. The man with no plan.”

“Like Athena from the head of Zeus,” Steve said ruefully. “Except for instead of wisdom and strategy, I got, like, sticktoitiveness. And also biceps.”

Barton kicked the back of his seat. 

***

When Romanoff finally sauntered back from wherever she disappeared to when Steve wasn’t paying attention, it was with the news that their route had reverted from a toxic wasteland back to a regular road. There was one last run on the snacks and restrooms, and then everyone piled back into the vehicles. Steve went down the line for a quick headcount, but when he got back to his humvee, Wilson was in the passenger’s seat.

“Hey Wilson,” Steve said. “Whatcha doin’.”

“I had a really good idea.”

“Do tell.”

“I was thinking you could drive.”

“And why is that.”

“Because I drove all of Germany and most of Austria and all of Hungary so far, which technically for the record means I’m exceeding my daily maximum hours per Colonel Coulson’s policy, and I could make Barton do it except he makes racecar noises and or tries to use the headlights to communicate in Morse code with passing drivers, and also the sun is going to set well before we get there and I heard you have magic night vision and also I don’t want to. Sir.”

Steve considered this, but he was too tired to process an argument of that depth and complexity. “Fine,” he said. “but that means you have to radio up to Alpha 3-1 every time they forget about the minimum follow distance and decide to play bumper cars with Charlie 2-3.”

“Done,” said Wilson.

Steve texted Bucky.

_Steve: finally leaving this damn rest stop. they’re letting me take the wheel which is how i know they don’t know me from adam._

_Bucky: hey me too!_

Attached was a selfie. Bucky was in the driver’s seat, hand on the steering wheel spinner, mugging for the camera. Dugan’s face covered the left half of the screen, and he had left Bucky out of focus in favor of the PX parking lot visible out the driver’s side window. Steve saved it anyway.

_Steve: your hair is so much longer already._

_Bucky: not that i would mind but youre so lucky i can still drive because otherwise we would be stuck in brooklyn forever once we get back because i am smarter than the us army and thus would never let you drive_

_Steve: you know i wouldn’t mind being stuck in brooklyn forever with you._

***

As soon as the convoy set off, it became clear that the noise the engine was making with Steve driving was not the same noise it had been making with anyone else driving.

“He’s got it in low gear!” Wilson was saying.

“I don’t got it in low gear,” Steve gritted out.

“Then it’s slipped between low gear and high gear somehow.”

“It really looks like he’s got in in high,” Barton said, peering over Steve’s shoulder. “Sir, put it in neutral real quick.”

“We’re on the _highway_ ,” Steve said.

“So?”

“We’re only going forty,” Wilson interjected.

“I’m _flooring_ it.”

“And we’re only going forty, which means Wilson’s right and something is off. Put ‘er in neutral.”

Cautiously, Steve did. He did not know very much about cars but he had never put one in neutral on the highway before and was not pleased to be starting now. They coasted along, slowing rapidly.

“Jesus, sir, you gotta put her back _into_ gear eventually or we’re gonna be _stopped_ on the highway.”

Steve did. The noise had not abated. 

“It still feel off to you?” Barton asked. He was talking to Wilson, not Steve.

“Yeah. Captain Rogers, you know, I’m starting to think you used up all your luck with technology in one go.”

***

They pulled into the Convoy Support Center in the middle of the night, engine screaming, occupants sweating, dashboard and sections of the floor hot like a furnace. Barton popped out and opened up the hood, complaining around the flashlight clenched between his teeth. Wilson went to claim a corner of the tent, and Steve headed to the front of the convoy to return the binder to Stark.

“First Sergeant?” he called up into the cab of the truck. The door swung open, and a blanket of cool air settled over Steve before melting away into the warm Hungarian night. Steve stood there, struck dumb.

“You got my binder?” Stark asked, climbing down.

“Some of these have _air conditioning_?” Steve asked.

“Oh yeah,” Stark grinned, teeth gleaming in the moonlight. “Hope you had a good time playing Convoy Commander.”

Steve glared at him. “It went fine.”

“Sure thing, sir. You’re a rock star. We’re all impressed.” He leaned in. “Oh, and by the way? We’d be _more_ impressed if you could keep your _own vehicle_ uniform.”

“Uniform?” Steve asked. 

“Don’t think I didn’t notice Wilson doesn’t have his gloves. Accountability is everything. Good work, sir.” With that, he turned away and vanished into the night.


	5. Chapter 5

The next morning, they spend a few hours sitting at the Romanian border, Barton curled up in the passenger’s side of the backseat, helmeted head propped against their mountain of bags. He was snoring, lightly—Steve suspected he wouldn’t be able to hear it without the serum, not over the music Wilson, from his spot in the driver’s seat, was blasting over a Bluetooth speaker on the dashboard, nodding along and occasionally singing under his breath. It was something Steve remembered from childhood, very nineties—TLC, maybe. Not what he would have expected. Steve was behind Wilson, knees propped up against the seat as well as he could manage. He was about to beat his own high score at slither.io. They were getting really good at border crossings.

Stark popped his head in through the unzipped plastic window to Steve’s left. “Sir,” he said, directly in Steve’s ear.

“Ah!” said Steve, and his little snake guy died. “Dammit.”

“Since you’re not busy,” Stark began, which, rude, it’s not like anyone was busy, “hold this. Do not, under any circumstances, break it.” He proceeded to hand Steve an enormous, ugly, fragile wooden vase. It barely fit through the window. Steve’s immediate response was to try and hand it back.

“Uh-uh, no take backs,” said Stark, not at all like a First Sergeant with nearly twenty years of experience in the United States Army. Then he dashed off to where Romanoff, surrounded by three annoyed-yet-smitten-looking Romanian border guards, was waving a stack of paperwork in his direction.

Steve looked up at Wilson, who was turned around in his seat, smirking at him. “Yeah, yeah. Help me shift this thing over into Barton’s lap, will ya?”

In the Snapchat he sent to Bucky, Barton had both his arms around the vase like a teddy bear, golden light streaming in through the windows and highlighting his features, Wilson pulling a face in the background. _Sleepy soldier_ , Steve had written in banner text, drawing in three question marks to emphasize the what-the-fuck-ness of his own existence.

_Bucky: should i be jealous_

_Steve: depends. did you turn into a frog since i last saw you?_

The next message was a photo message, which was exactly what Steve had hoped for. Bucky was in bed, which made sense. It was the middle of the night in Texas. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, so Steve could see his torso in the dim light, scarring all down the left side. He had a little more flesh and muscle on his frame than he had when Steve left, and a knot of worry Steve didn’t realize he was carrying unclenched. Bucky was working at the PT, and the PT was working. Bucky was also pouting, and Steve smiled softly at the line between his eyebrows.

_Steve: i think you’re probably safe._

_Bucky: i know i am  
Bucky: im going to try to sleep though. wish me luck_

_Steve: good luck. i love you._

“Ayyy!” Wilson cheered from the driver’s seat. Stark was moving down the convoy, slapping each vehicle in turn on the hood. One by one, all down the line, engines rumbled to life. Stark swung back into the passenger’s seat and Wilson put the humvee in gear, rolling slowly out onto Romanian tarmac.

***

The first major change in landscape of the whole trip came as the convoy wound its way up into the mountains. According to Google, the area they were passing through was Transylvania, which was apparently a real place and in Romania. The most pressing consequence of this was that Barton seized the opportunity to spend several hours talking in a Dracula voice. Stark, for reasons passing understanding, found it amusing and refused to make him stop. Steve and Wilson were relieved when the strain of shouting over the engine finally caused him to go hoarse and lapse back into a nap.

Transylvania, though, was its own kind of staggering. It was an old place, the kind of place that had been tamed and shaped by human hands for so long that its habitations were their own form of wildness, fused into the mountains. The mountains themselves weren’t forbidding, exactly—Steve had seen taller and sharper and meaner peaks in Afghanistan, or even Colorado. But there was something nonetheless foreboding about them—like they might swallow you up and never let you go. The leavings of a thousand years of human life dotted the landscape, sheep and castles and weird little piles of hay, like a fairy-tale illustration. Transylvania didn’t seem to care much for change, either—it chewed it up and spit it out on the side of the road. Steve had never seen so many jackknifed trailers and overturned semis in his life. The whole convoy was quiet as it rolled past a scene that couldn’t have been anything but a fatality. At another point, thousands of eggs had spilled out across the road, coating the asphalt in yolk. The convoy moved slowly, carefully, past wrecked metal, around corners, up hills, locals’ compact cars zipping carelessly into and out of their formation like skipping stones. There were a lot of old men in Romania, and they all looked the same, piled on stoops or benches or the hoods of cars. They would sit in the shade and smoke cigarettes, a wifebeater on or no shirt at all, and watch the convoy go by.

The engine was still significantly louder than it had been before they let Steve drive, but as they wound further into the hills, Steve heard a familiar whir overhead. After a few minutes, the rest of the convoy picked it up, too, the sound of helicopters echoing between the mountains, off the surfaces of the lakes. As the first bird swooped into the valley, the radios, mounted silently on their stacks between Wilson and Stark, crackled to life.

“ _Main Body 1-6, this is Dustoff 6. How copy, over?_ ”

Barton let out a whoop, and Wilson reached his left arm out the window to pound on the side of the humvee. Steve craned his neck upwards, trying to track the birds. They were Blackhawks, red crosses on a white background emblazoned across the side. Even Stark was smiling as he picked up the hand mike.

“Good copy, Dustoff 6. You boys comfortable up there, over?”

“ _Ridin’ in style, Main Body 1-6. Holler if you need us. Dustoff 6 out._ ”

“Damn,” yelled Barton over the engine and the wind and the noise. “These assholes just left Germany this morning and they’re all caught up to us.”

“Still, nice to know if I send us careening off a cliff, someone’s gonna swoop in and take our slow asses to the hospital,” Wilson shouted back cheerfully.

“No need for hospitals if we go careening off a cliff. I’ll kill you myself if that happens,” Stark said, but he had his head halfway out the window, and he was smiling.

There were three or four Blackhawks total, and they flew slow, lazy loops overhead, keeping pace with the convoy and leaving at least one bird within eyesight at all times. At one point a pilot came in low, showily skimming just above the water. Steve maneuvered his phone out the window and took a photo to send to Bucky.

_Steve: close air support, hooah?_

_Bucky: youre a dumbass  
Bucky: its gorgeous there_

_Steve: better by air, though. we sat at the border for three hours this morning before they even took off and these guys are already here.  
Steve: what did i do to deserve the slow route, huh?_

_Bucky: what do you mean what did you do to deserve it  
Bucky: after they repealed dadt how many days did it take you to get signed up for some sneaky squirrel science experiment bullshit huh_

_Steve: that’s beside the point_

_Bucky: three days, steven_

And, the thing was . . .

The thing was, sometimes Steve and Bucky hurt each other. They didn’t mean to, usually. But twenty years is a long time to love another person, and there were parts of their relationship that ached, that burned, that Steve couldn’t even think about with flinching away like they were an open flame. They had been through more than most. It was getting better. They were _working through it_ , as Bucky’s therapist had reminded both of them, and Steve usually kept the fire banked low, to be carefully vented through constructive discussion and thoughtful action. But there are some things he would never apologize for, and there were some times he could never stop himself from hitting back.

_Steve: yeah well  
Steve: before they repealed dadt how many years did i watch you serve without me_

_Bucky: ...  
Bucky: i loved you all that time you know_

Steve breathed out. Bucky was right. It wasn’t the time, or the place. One day soon, they would have time, all the time, until the end of their lives, until the fire burned down to embers and all that was left was one another, and the memory of heat. He texted back.

_Steve: i know. i loved you too. but i couldn’t wait._

***

When they finally rolled into the Convoy Support Center for the night, Barton flung open his door, leapt out in the direction of the Port-a-Potties, and broke the hideous wooden vase into three pieces. Steve, Wilson, and Barton stared down at the remains in mute terror. Stark, on the other side of the vehicle but tracking both the noise and their facial expressions, cleared his throat.

“Well then. Seeing as Captain Rogers had _specific guidance_ not to break the vase, I’m going to assume that the vase is not broken. And when I see the vase in the morning, I assume it will look as good, _if not better_ , than it did last night. Roger?”

“Roger,” Barton whispered, broken.

An hour later, it turned out that Romanoff’s inexplicable fondness for Barton was the greatest gift Eastern Europe had to offer.

“Tasha, thank you. Thank you,” Barton told her as she passed him a bottle of something that looked like epoxy but was labelled in Cyrillic, so who knew. Tasha? Wilson mouthed to Steve, who shrugged. “Where did you get it?”

“Rollins, from lead vehicle? He tell me, hm, ‘gear adrift is a gift,’ yes?”

“Yes,” Barton breathed, awed. Steve leaned in to whisper to Wilson.

“Rollins, huh. Do you think we should mention it’s not actually U.S. Army doctrine that loose equipment is just up for grabs?”

“Bet you anything that fucker has my gloves,” Sam whispered back.

***

Stark gave the vase a good long look before they rolled out the next day, but didn’t say a single word. Operating a reasonable level of accord, they crossed the border into Bulgaria around sunrise. Passing the checkpoint seemed like crossing into another world, not just another country. The water tank bounced along outside the windshield at the same, static distance it had for the entire trip, but it was framed by an endlessly unrolling carpet of yellow under the blue sky. Steve, waking up from a brief, accidental nap, blinked hard a couple of times, wondering if he had finally succumbed to heatstroke. The landscape outside remained unchanged.

_Steve: i can see more sunflowers at this exact moment than i will see for the rest of my life, combined._

_Bucky: pics. or bring me back a bouquet_

Steve pulled up Snapchat and took a photo. Frowning down at it, he switched back over to his messages.

_Steve: not the same as it is in person._

_Bucky: never is. why do you think i want you home so badly_

Steve, already flushed in the heat, turned an even brighter red. He pulled up the app again and added in the temperature sticker—104°F, Jesus Christ—and a banner of text.

_Home stretch. Nothing can stop us now!_

Smiling, he pressed send.

***

Five hours later, Steve and Wilson were peering down at Barton, who was crouched down next to one of the trailers, glaring at something underneath it. The last of the sun had just disappeared over the tops of the trees.

“So the problem is . . . the brakes,” Steve clarified, with the confidence of a man who had failed his driver’s test three times.

“The air brakes on the trailer, yeah,” said Barton. “One of the hoses has a bad leak, so the brakes are locked out. Technically, I can just disconnect them and it’ll roll.”

“Great idea,” said Steve, who desperately wished Stark would come back and be in charge again. He was somewhere at the rear of the convoy, making a random private regret his own existence.

“Well, it would be great, except we won’t be able to stop the truck all that quickly.”

“Oh,” said Steve.

“Especially since this is the one with all the sensitive items. Which means it’s fuckin’ heavy, and if I crash it you’ll be in a lot of trouble.”

“That’s the SI container?” groaned Steve. “Wait, why would I be responsible for the SI container?”

“Man,” said Wilson, “you really gotta start paying more attention to which equipment you sign for.”

“Fuck,” said Steve.

“We do have an empty trailer bed, so technically, we can get the crane over here, lift the container out of the broke-dick trailer, move it to the other trailer, disconnect the brakes, and get on our merry way. Only two problems with that.”

Steve looked up at the crane. He wasn’t sure how he had missed the fact that they had been dragging a crane along through five countries. He hoped he wasn’t responsible for the crane, too. “What are the problems?”

“Well, no one has an operator’s license except First Sergeant, and his is expired. The crane hasn’t been load tested in a few years, technically. It’s not necessarily rated to lift things at that angle. Or that weight. Or anything sensitive. But we can try it if you want.”

“That was five problems,” Romanoff called out from where she was lounging, catlike, across the hood of her squad car. She looked like dealing with any of them was both an affront to her dignity and a waste of her time, but also like she thought Barton, rummaging around in his bag, was kind of adorable. She rolled her eyes. “Americans.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and veto that plan before First Sarge gets back,” Wilson said. “No offense, sir, but I think the two of you combined might be dumb enough to try it.”

Barton grinned, holding up a roll of duct tape in one hand, electrical tape in the other. “Then the next part of the plan involves somebody finding me a lighter.”

***

They ended up stopping nine more times. At each juncture, Barton melted another layer of tape onto the suspect hoses. The end result looked more organic than mechanical, like those spaceships in the show Bucky made Steve watch with him, but he only set something on fire once, and they put it out before Stark noticed.

The sun was rising through the mist when they pulled up to the airfield, so Steve could make out the shape of the mountains ringing the plain. It was very, very quiet once the engines turned off. Steve had nearly gotten accustomed to a constant-low grade headache from the sound, but the silence was like a balm. Stark announced an eight-hour rest period and herded everyone into the tent awaiting newly-arrived units. Steve claimed a cot in the corner, and it was cool, window flaps rolled down to let in the slight breeze. He kicked off his boots and rolled over on his side, and the last thing he did before he went to sleep was check his messages.

_Bucky: see, told you you would make it. i believed in you_


	6. Chapter 6

The next afternoon, Stark rounded everyone up in the center of the field. It was blazing hot again, and in the light of day, Steve could make out the details of the area. There were few big clusters of tents, camo netting thrown over their tops and staked haphazardly to obscure their shapes. There was a long row of Port-a-Potties and -Showers off to one side, and a motorpool set up on the other, their vehicles mixed in with those from the vanguard. The whole field was of dry brittle grass, and in the distance, some odd-looking helicopters were plunked down.

“Everything the light touches, kiddos, is my kingdom,” he began.

“Really?”

“No, Barton. In fact, the opposite. Everyone see the line of caution tape?” The unit looked dutifully at the yellow caution tape laid across the grass, forming a square a few hundred yards wide. “Everything inside the tape is my kingdom. Everything outside the tape is Bulgaria’s kingdom, and they reserve the right to shoot you if you go over there.”

“There’s no way they’d shoot us,” muttered Wilson.

“We will shoot you. For us, it will be cheerful,” said Romanoff from somewhere behind Steve. He jumped, turned. She certainly looked cheerful.

“I have a question,” said Barton.

“No questions! Okay, for today, priorities of work: set up comms, set up tents, vehicle maintenance! Move out!”

Steve, somehow, was in charge of tents. Wilson was over with the comms equipment and Barton was off at the motorpool, which left Steve staring at six deeply apathetic strangers across a massive pile of tent poles and swaths of canvas.

“Okay,” Steve told them. “How hard can this be?”

Later, Steve thought back to those words. He blamed himself for his lack of foresight, and for the jinx he had likely placed over the construction of the tents. But as he and Rollins heaved on the ropes, straining to balance the central poles, a guy whose name was actually _Thor_ swinging a hammer with abandon at the stakes driven into the ground and Rumlow balanced precariously twelve feet in the air, straddling the entire mess like a deluded cowboy, he felt a sense of fond indulgence towards his past self. He had had so much faith in his fellow man. There was no way he could have known what was in store.

“Uh, sir?” Sergeant Lopez called out from somewhere inside the heaving monstrosity. “I’m looking at the leftover sections of canvas, and I’m not sure we have everything together right. There’s like a five-foot gap on this side.”

“ _Fuck_ this,” Rollins growled, and he released the rope on his side. The tent sagged towards Thor just as he took a wild swing with his hammer, which collided with a pole, the sound reverberating across the field. Like a row of dominoes collapsing in Jell-O, the tent poles went down, swallowing Lopez and Rumlow is a mass of fabric. Steve was left with a loose length of rope and a slack-jawed expression.

“Oops?” said Rollins.

Lopez had escaped damage, although it took them a while to untangle her from the failed dream of a tent. Rumlow limped off to the medics’ truck, complaining about a twisted ankle. Half an hour later, they had all the sections of canvas untied and laid out across the grass like a child’s jigsaw puzzle. Another half hour and some undignified squabbling after that, Steve gave in and texted Bucky.

_Steve: help please._

_Bucky: do you need help from the light of your life james buchanan barnes because you miss him so much, or do you need help from sfc barnes because a fine arts degree, a science experiment, and a direct commission as an o3 does not actually qualify you to succeed at most warrior tasks and drills_

_Steve: i love you very much you know._

_Bucky: sfc barnes at your service_

Steve sent him a picture of the disassembled tent and four question marks. Five minutes later, he received a hastily-sketched out diagram and a couple of paragraphs of instructions.

_Steve: god, i wish you were here._

_Bucky: im at a starbucks. i have a book and a ridiculous latte. you wish you were HERE_

_Steve: yeah, that’s true._

_Bucky: see you shoulda thought ahead and gotten your arm ripped off. excellent way to dip out of your contract early and you get to just ride a wave of paperwork to the end_

Steve hesisted. Bucky joked about the arm a lot, had been able to for a while, almost since the very beginning. But Steve remembered how it looked when he found him on the table. He had still been bleeding. Even Bucky didn’t remember that, he hadn’t been conscious. Still, it was Bucky’s goddamn arm. Carefully, Steve typed out a response.

_Steve: it’s a lot of paperwork, though._

_Bucky: you right, shoulda asked them to do my right arm instead. coulda gotten a personal assistant out of the deal_

***

That night, they slept in the newly-erected tent and it didn’t collapse on them, a fact Steve took quiet pride in. The birds carrying the Public Affairs staff and Colonel Fury weren’t touching down until the day after, so for the next twenty-four hours, there was virtually nothing to do. Steve, Barton, Wilson, and Romanoff wound up clustered in the lee of the mess tent, playing cards for the candy from their MREs.

“I just don’t see how it’s fair that she’s allowed on our side of the line, but if we go on her side of the line, she can shoot us,” Wilson said. Romanoff bared her teeth.

“Who cares?” Barton moaned. “It’s a hundred and ten degrees. If she shoots me, maybe the blood loss will make me hypothermic, and I won’t be so goddamn hot.”

“I will shoot you any time,” Romanoff smirked, and oh, wasn’t _that_ interesting, “but it is not one hundred and ten. Not even in stupid _Fahrenheit_.” She nodded up at the storm clouds forming overhead.

“I’m just _saying_ ,” Wilson continued, “over that mountain? The beautiful coastal nation of Greece. I looked it up, you know what’s beyond that? The _Aegean_. I could be spending my summer on the Aegean, but no, Romanoff’s gonna shoot me if I try.”

“Pretty sure their patch of dead grass is not meaningfully closer to the Aegean than our patch of dead grass,” Barton told him. Steve was frowning down at his M&Ms.

“Hey, did you guys know these expired in 2011?”

“I’ll eat them if you don’t want them,” Barton offered. The wind had picked up, and he slapped a hand down on top of the deck to keep it from blowing away.

“No, I’m just saying, maybe those of you without super-healing should be concerned.”

“Man, Captain America or not, there’s no way you’re touching my Sour Skittles,” Wilson told him.

“I am,” said Barton. “I call.” He laid down a pair of kings. Wilson whistled low, then showed his hand. Three twos.

“Man, how is that possible? I cheated,” Barton complained, as Wilson took the pot.

“God hates you,” Wilson informed him. Barton rolled his eyes.

“No he doesn’t,” he said. At that moment, a hailstone the size of marble fell from the sky, bounced off the side of the mess tent, and nailed Barton in the center of the forehead. He sputtered and swore, and the rest of the table sat gaping.

“Holy shit,” said Romanoff, and they all dashed for the entrance to the tent as the heavens opened up around them.

The storm wasn’t long, but it was deafening, ice pounding on the roof of the mess tent. The unit was clustered around the plastic windows, watching the fury and capriciousness of a Bulgarian summer. Some of the hailstones were the size of golf balls. When the skies cleared again, Steve ventured outside. There was ice littering the ground, but the sun was high in the sky, and the temperatures were already in the nineties.

“This is bullshit,” Barton complained, and this time, Steve agreed.

***

Steve had time to kill before the evening command meeting, so he wandered of to a secluded corner of the airfield and tried to call Bucky. The phone rang for a bit, then went to voicemail.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve started, looking off at the mountains. “Just calling to say hey. It’s a slow day today out here. There was a hailstorm, which was weird because it’s also hot as balls. Bulgaria’s very changeable, I think you’d like it. I’m also looking at these mountains to the south right now, and it’s all kinds of beautiful and dramatic and whatever. Wilson says that Greece is on the other side, which would be cool if I could go. I think we should go to Greece whenever we’re both out. Or anywhere, really. I think we should travel.” Steve cleared his throat. “Anyway, I’m just calling to tell you I love you, and I miss you, and _Jesus Christ holy fuck what the fuck_ —” He whipped around because, sure as he was alive, something had _licked_ him. It was a dog. There was a dog there.

“Who are you?” Steve asked it. “Or, what are you doing?” The dog cocked its head at him, then nipped at his bootlace. “No, uh-uh. You’re very cute, but go away please. Go away. Go away!” Steve flung his arm out to indicate _away_. The dog either didn’t understand or didn’t respect the sign language. “You’re a good dog, but I don’t have any food and you smell kind of weird, so if you could just, _ah_!” The dog jumped at him, and Steve stumbled backwards. His phone beeped. As Steve fled the scene, the dog at his heels, he realized his voicemail to Bucky hadn’t ended as thoughtfully or as romantically as he had hoped. He sent a compensatory text.

_Steve: don’t worry, i’m fine. everything is under control._

There. Better.

***

The command meeting was the exact amount of boring that Steve expected it to be. Stark talked essentially the entire time, touching on such rousing topics as I Know There’s Nothing To Do But Everyone Still Has To Stay Awake All Day, Yes Including Barton, and Injuries Must Be Reported To The Medic, Yes Even If It’s Rumlow, and No One Is Allowed to Open Six MREs And Only Take The Peanut Butter And Blueberry Cobbler, Lopez We Expected More From You and, If Anyone Embarrasses Me Tomorrow In Front Of The Brigade Commander, So Help Me God. Steve was trying to keep his eyes open per the first instruction when Stark pounded his fist on the table, jolting him out of his half-nap.

“One final thing: the next person who touches Dave or feeds Dave or lets Dave in a tent or _looks_ at Dave is going to _regret ever hearing Dave’s name_. Is that _clear_.”

Silence. Steve glanced around, but no one else seemed to think that was clear. Whispers sprung up around the table as the assembled soldiers attempted to remember their coworkers’ first names, and Wilson piped up from the corner.

“First Sergeant, can I ask . . . what Dave did?”

“It’s not about what Dave did, it’s about what he _is_. He’s dirty and probably disease-ridden and definitely not one of us, so everyone had best keep their distance. Is that clear?”

An uncomfortable feeling settled in Steve’s gut. “First Sergeant, I’m not clear on who Dave is, but if you’re having issues of this magnitude with a soldier in the unit, I’m going to insist you take a different approach in addressing them.”

Stark stared across the table at Steve like he had suggested Stark start greeting Colonel Fury with a fist bump instead of a crisp salute. “Dave. _Dave_. Dave the _dog_. Dave the stray dog who pisses on people’s sleeping bags when they show an ounce of kindness to him. Dave is not welcome in my company area anymore, and anyone who has issues with how I handle Dave can take them up with the battalion commander when he gets here. Any further questions, _sir_?”

There was a long silence. Steve held eye contact with Stark, processing, until Wilson blessedly spoke up again.

“Wait a minute, you _named_ him?” 

***

That night, Steve settled into his cot again, tent creaking and swaying overhead. Barton was already snoring in the background, a soft rumbling sound, and Steve had a goodnight text from Bucky.

_Bucky: sorry i missed your call. lots happening in paperworkland today, tell you about it later. im glad Big Strong Captain America didnt find a mystery stray too much to handle. i love you sleep well_

_Steve: he’s not a mystery, his name is dave. i love you too._

Content, Steve drifted off to sleep.

***

The sun rose on Steve’s final day in Bulgaria, and with it came the sound of Blackhawks overhead, the _thwap_ of their rotors increasing in volume until they touched down in the middle of the field. The side doors rolled open, and Colonel Fury exited before the blades even slowed down, standing tall like they wouldn’t dare strike him. Lieutenant Colonel Coulson was close at his heels, hunched slightly over. Fury strode into the HQ tent, the flaps around the entrance snapping dramatically in the breeze, announcing his presence. Wilson called the group to attention, reported in. Then they all stood in silence, waiting.

Fury surveyed the space, turning in a slow circle. Steve tried not to fidget. Even Barton looked serious. Fury removed his eyepro, then slowly pulled his gloves off. Then he began to traverse the room in a circle, hands crossed behind his back. When he made eye contact with Steve, his gaze burned a hole, possibly directly into his soul. He paused in front of Barton, who looked like he was trying to forget that facial expressions existed, then completed his circuit of the room and reclaimed his place in the center. There was a long pause.

“Rollins,” he said, suddenly. “What are the three General Orders?”

“Uh,” said Rollins.

“Homework,” said Fury. “Report at zero-five tomorrow morning ready to recite them.”

“Sir,” began Rollins.

“Carry on,” Fury ordered, and swept out of the room, Coulson at his back. Ms. Potts, who had sidled in quietly at some point during the siege, clapped her hands.

“Okay! That was fun. Steve, you ready for your interview?”

“The fuck was _that_ ,” Barton hissed as Steve followed Ms. Potts out of the room.

“I don’t know, why doesn’t Rollins know the General Orders?” Wilson whispered back.

“Are we supposed to know those? Like after Basic? I thought everyone forgot those. Wait! Wilson! Come back, Sam what are they where do I find—”

***

Ms. Potts spent some time fussing with Steve’s hair and his clothes, obviously dismayed that a week of intermittent Port-a-Showers and without changes of clothes had done little for his physical appearance. But she asked easy soundbite questions, and Steve stood in front of the helicopters, and framed by the mountains, and later dramatically lit by the setting sun. She was clearly pleased with the results, in a take-that-Russia, our-war-hero-is-prettier-than-your-war-hero kind of way. It was a little anticlimactic, Steve thought, looking at the photos over the camera guy’s shoulder. He could have talked in vague, idealistic terms about the importance of allyship and sovereignty and deterrence from the comfort of his own barracks room. But there he was in profile, backlit in red and gold like he was about to catch fire. The camera guy had told him to look _noble_. No one reading the press releases would know that he had just caught Romanoff’s eye, she and Barton laughing at him from behind a truck.

Steve sent Bucky a text.

_Steve: mission complete with the interview nonsense. my flight’s at 1700 tomorrow. also reminder that my international plan runs out at midnight so i won’t hear from you after then until i’m back in germany with wifi._

On his way back to HQ, Steve caught a last glimpse of Ms. Potts, her team packing away their equipment. She was cradling a familiar-looking vase. As Steve watched, she very carefully nestled it in with the more delicate equipment, trying to suppress a grin. _Huh_ , Steve thought. _Good for them_.

Steve ducked into the tent and headed over to the admin desk to set up his ride to the airport the next day. He was flying out of Sofia, about two hours away, so he figured a 1300 departure from the airfield was reasonable. These thoughts were immediately crushed by the slow and unstoppable force of Army scheduling.

“There’s a van leaving at zero-two hundred to take Rumlow to a morning appointment, he has X-rays scheduled on his foot at zero-five. There’s also a thirteen-twenty shuttle to take the camera crew out to get some footage of the city, but that’s a little too late for you, right?” Rollins said.

“Not really,” said Steve, “Thirteen hundred departure was just to be safe. Thirteen-twenty should be fine.”

“Sorry, Captain Rogers, guidance is we shouldn’t risk you having to reschedule your flight. Rescheduling costs the Army money.”

“Can’t we add another shuttle between zero-two and thirteen-twenty?”

“Shuttles cost the Army money.”

“Could we maybe have the camera crew leave just a little bit earlier?” Steve begged.

“No,” said Rollins, and declared the matter closed.

0200 departure meant 0145 arrival at HQ. It was already after 2100. Steve looked around the airfield. It was dark, the grass was really prickly, and Dave was lurking around the edges again. Steve decided his happiest memories would be made by wishing everyone good night and going directly to sleep. He checked his phone. Bucky hadn’t responded. He missed him so much his chest hurt, but he really needed to go to bed.

_Steve: my phone becomes a pumpkin at midnight so i’m gonna say goodnight, and goodbye until later. i love you._


	7. Chapter 7

Steve’s alarm went off at 0135.

“The fuck, man,” Wilson grumbled. From Barton’s corner of the tent, a packet of MRE cheese spread flew through the air and beaned Steve in the forehead. Steve grinned. It was a fitting goodbye.

Seven minutes later, Steve was standing naked in the Port-a-Shower, regretting his choices. With all the crap he needed to shove into his flight bag, the only civvies he had space for were a pair of basketball shorts, a thin t-shirt, and his shower shoes. Now that he was in the middle of a field in Bulgaria, this seemed insufficient for international air travel.

“Man up, Rogers,” he told himself. “It’s not like you’re going to see anyone important.”

At 0145, he was standing in the battalion HQ tent. As luck would have it, so was Colonel Fury. Steve snapped to attention. His shower shoes squeaked. Fury looked down at them, then slowly back up to Steve. Steve looked resolutely back at Fury.

“Captain Rogers,” Fury said. “I trust you’ll have a . . . comfortable flight back.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.” That was good. That didn’t sound like he was dying of shame.

Steve helped Sergeant Lopez and Corporal Rumlow load up the van. At 0151, they were all strapped in and ready to go.

“You know,” said Steve, “we could just leave now.”

“We could, except then we wouldn’t be following orders,” said Rumlow. Steve stared at him.

“Yes, but. We wouldn’t be waiting in the van as long,” he offered.

“Sorry, Captain Rogers,” Sergeant Lopez said, twisting around in the driver’s seat. “Step-off is at zero-two.”

“Okay,” Steve surrendered. They sat in the van, engine idling, radio on low. At 0200 on the dot, they rolled away from the airfield.

***

It wasn’t a bad drive, overall. Lopez turned out to be entirely too talkative for a zero dark thirty van ride, and Rumlow turned out to be a snorer, but they made it to the airport without incident. Steve spent altogether too much time second-guessing which terminal he was at and wandering between the two options. There were almost no other people around and nothing was labelled. Then, rounding the corner beyond a set of baggage carousels he was nearly certain he had passed twice already, he stopped dead.

Bucky was there.

He was sitting on a duffel bag on the floor, head resting on the seat of the bench behind him. He was sleeping. Steve could see his chest rise and fall as he breathed.

Steve blinked, hard, but it was really Bucky. Steve knew every line of his face, every hair on his head, the way his left foot twitched in his sleep, kicked out in front of him. Something warm rising in his chest, he walked over to meet him, knelt down to his level. He reached out to brush the outside of his knee.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve whispered. Bucky cracked an eye open. “It’s four-thirty in the morning. What are you doing here?”

“Hey, Steve,” Bucky said. He looked Steve all the way up and down, and Steve let the warm feeling envelop him completely. “Th’ fuck told you shower shoes were appropriate airport attire.”

“You’re one to talk,” Steve told him. “Long hair, one arm, sleeping on the floor. You look like a homeless nutjob.”

“C’mere,” Bucky said, and pulled him into a kiss. He had morning breath, but the kiss was long, and gentle, and perfect. Steve felt completely unable to contain his heart inside of his chest.

“God,” he said. “Bucky. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, you know that?”

“I was gonna surprise you,” Bucky said. “Be standing here like a badass when you rolled in. What are you doing here so early?”

“You are a badass,” Steve told him. “A sleepy badass. Fifteen minutes prior to fifteen minutes prior, you know?”

“Stand by to stand by,” Bucky murmured agreeably. He ran his hand through the short hair at the nape of Steve’s neck.

“I can let you go back to sleep,” Steve said, a shivery feeling running down his spine.

“No, I’m awake now.” Bucky opened his eyes the rest of the way. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” Steve told him. “So, if you’re here . . .”

“Yes.”

“That means you’re not at Sam Houston . . .”

“No.”

“Or at Walter Reed, or Fort Benning, or, I don’t know, Belvoir or something stupid . . .”

“That’s correct.”

“You’re out?” Steve asked. “Officially?”

“You’re talking to Sergeant First Class, _retired_ , James Buchanan Barnes.”

Steve leaned in to kiss him again. “Congratulations.”

“You gonna thank me for my service, doll?”

“In so many ways. Bucky, I’m so happy for you.”

“I’m so happy for us. And hey, in eight and a half months, we’ll both be on the other side.”

“We can get a dog,” said Steve happily.

“We can get _two_ dogs. Now, help me up off this freakin’ floor. I’m not as young as I used to be.”

Steve and Bucky took a couple of turns around the baggage carousels so Bucky could stretch his legs. Then they settled into the benches near the check-in desk, waiting for it to be manned. At 0530, the first handful of passengers began checking in, and Steve went up to print his boarding pass. Three minutes later, he returned empty-handed.

“So, there’s good news and there’s bad news.”

“For the love of Christ. Please don’t tax your brain making up good news. Just tell me the bad news.”

“We’re not allowed to check in until two hours before the flight.”

Bucky stared at him. “But our flight’s at seventeen hundred.”

“That’s correct.”

“It’s not even six yet.”

“That’s also correct.”

“Two hours before seventeen hundred is fifteen hundred.”

“You’re hot when you’re correct like that, Buck.”

“We can’t check bags or anything for the next nine hours?”

“We cannot.”

“Fuck.” They sat for a moment. “Well, there’s no way you’re wandering around Sofia in your shower shoes with all your gear.”

“I was hoping not to.”

“I know you. You’d cause an international incident.”

“The other bad news is all the restaurants are on the other side of security.”

“Aw, gee, thanks. First you tell me there’s good news and bad news, then it’s just bad news, then it’s bad news and _worse_ news. You’re lucky I love you.”

“I am,” Steve agreed.

“Whatever,” said Bucky. “We’re very interesting people. We’re men in our primes. We’ll find ways to pass the time.” Steve suspected his face gave something away at that, because Bucky was suddenly brandishing a finger at him. “We are not fucking in the airport bathroom.”

“Aw,” said Steve.

“That was a one-time thing.”

***

Three hours later, Steve was bored and hungry. Bucky was never boring, but they had already discussed every moment of their time apart in detail, and there was only so long he could sit re-memorizing every line on Bucky’s remaining palm without any cell service or even a copy of People magazine for entertainment. Then Bucky’s stomach rumbled. Steve’s thinking always turned much sharper where Bucky was concerned.

“You know,” he said, “there’s a weird little convenience store attached to the other terminal.”

Bucky narrowed his eyes at him and withdrew his hand. “And you’re just telling me this now?”

The weird little convenience store attached to the other terminal turned out to supply a wide variety of Bulgarian bread products. Steve was squinting at the labels, trying to figure out the difference between milinka and banitsa, when Bucky called out to him from the other aisle.

“Hey, Stevie, how much is a lev?”

“What’s a lev?” Steve asked, peering at another shelf. Maybe he was more of a mekitsa man.

“It’s the currency, dumbass. Is it one of those ones that’s worth way more than a dollar, or way less than a dollar?”

“Oh, yeah. Um, I wanna say about a dollar? Maybe slightly less than a dollar,” Steve answered. The zelnik looked pretty good.

“So if this bottle of wine costs eight lev, that’s a pretty good deal for an airport, right?” Steve whipped around.

“Buy five,” he said.

***

The floor of the Sofia airport turned out to be a _vastly_ better place to sit when you were drunk.

“I love being drunk,” Steve said to Bucky. Bucky’s head was in his lap. That was a good place for it.

“Cuz you’re a wastrel,” said Bucky. “A, a lush.”

“I’m glad I can still be drunk.”

“A teetotaler. Or, is that the opposite?”

“I have to drink so much wine, though. So much.”

“Dipsomaniac, ’s a good one.”

“I have to pee incredibly badly,” said Steve, to the four empty bottles on the floor by his feet.

“Not even noon yet, you drunkard.”

“It’s noon somewhere,” said Steve. “Maybe Brooklyn. Maybe Australia.”

“Maybe _your butt_.”

“I,” Steve announced, “am going to pee. In the other terminal. So that, as a follow-up, I can buy more wine.”

“Tactical mind of a generation,” Bucky agreed.

***

The problem with getting wonderfully, gloriously drunk of the floor of the Sofia airport turned out to be that, given enough hours before one’s flight left, one had time to become horribly, staggeringly hungover on the floor of the Sofia airport. When Steve explained this to Bucky, all he received in return was a baleful glare.

“I thought, somehow, that I would feel better on the other side of security,” Bucky moaned.

“I’m not sure why you did,” said Steve.

“Fuck you, and fuck your serum,” said Bucky.

“No airport fucking,” Steve reminded him primly. “You should really stop trying to keep up with me.”

“I drank a _quarter_ of what you did.”

“And I am only a quarter as hungover. This is my revenge for all those times we both went out in the snow, and I was the only one who got pneumonia.”

“That was _once_.”

“Honestly, though, I’m pretty relieved we made it through security with all this stuff.”

Bucky lifted his head from his hands. “What stuff?”

“I mean, I have my body armor in here,” Steve said, nudging his duffel with his foot.

“What, like, your IBA? With plates and everything?”

“Yeah. Plus my helmet, handful of empty mags, some other stuff. A fake rifle. There’s a reason I couldn’t fit regular-person shoes in here.”

Bucky stared at him. “Is that allowed?”

“Apparently.”

Bucky appeared to consider this. “Well, if you get tackled by the Bulgarian TSA, I’m not with you.”

***

In the end, as if as penance for their airport sins, their flight was delayed by another hour and a half. It did give Steve time to buy Bucky a burger on the dubiously-secure but blessedly-well-supplied side of the metal detectors.

“You know,” said Steve, as Bucky tore into his meal with alarming ferocity, “I was so stupid-happy to see you, I never asked what your actual plans are.”

“Well,” Bucky replied around a mouthful of bread and meat, “I figure you’re in Dietersheim for another week. I looked into it, and I can get a short-term rental just off post for practically nothing. You would be busy, mostly, but I figure that’s okay. Never seen the German countryside. I’ve heard it’s nice.”

“Yeah,” said Steve softly. “It is. I’d like having you nearby.”

“Then I know Recruiting Command's got you for another eight months, but they won't keep you at Knox, you'll be bouncing around. I was thinking . . . you know how I was talking about getting my degree?”

“Yeah,” Steve said. “Yeah, and Bucky, I still think it’s a great idea.”

“Well, the way I see it, I take advantage of the time I have. Take a bit of a break. Apply to some schools this fall. If I’m living on post with you, there won’t be a ton to worry about. I’ll travel when I want to, stay home when I don’t. And come next year, your contract will be up, I’ll have the GI Bill . . .” Bucky put the burger down, looked up at Steve. “I was thinking, that might be around the right time for us to have the wedding.”

There was no way any person could ever get used to this, the warm feeling spreading throughout Steve’s entire body, cradling him like water. He must be the only person who had ever felt this way about another, he thought. Otherwise no one would be able to get out of bed in the morning to go to war. The entire population of the world would stay in bed on Sunday mornings, the light coming in through the window and soft music playing on the radio, if only they felt this way. It was the only thing that made sense. He cupped Bucky’s cheek in his hand and kissed him deeply, thoroughly, right there in front of God and the entire jetsetting population of Bulgaria.

“I have hamburger in my mouth. You’re incredibly gross,” Bucky informed him, but he couldn’t stop the grin that was spreading across his face.

***

An hour and a half delay made catching their connecting flight from Paris to Nuremberg less of a walk in the park, and more of a desperate dash through no man’s land. Steve and Bucky were barrelling down the moving sidewalks in Charles de Gaulle, scaring the daylights out of elderly grandmothers, families with small children, and anyone with a rolling suitcase. Their gate was just visible at the other end of the connecting hallway, the last call being announced for the second time over the speakers. Bucky looked ready to mow down a businessman with a Bluetooth headset when Steve grabbed his arm.

“Bucky, wait,” he said.

“Wait later, Rogers, they’re saying our names personally. You know how late you gotta be to have them say your name personally?”

“What if our flight was too delayed, and we missed our connection?”

“What do you mean, what if? That’s what’s gonna happen if you don’t move your ass.”

“No, I mean . . . what if I call Colonel Coulson, and I let him know our flight was delayed too long, and we missed our connection?”

Bucky thought about that a minute. They had stopped walking, so they were crawling along at the pace of the moving sidewalk. “Well, I guess we’d have to get our flights rescheduled. To the identical one, twenty-four hours from now.”

Steve felt himself grinning like a loon, but he didn’t care. “Exactly. Which would leave us trapped here, in Paris, together. For twenty-four hours.”

“Tragic,” Bucky said.

“But,” said Steve, “we could make the most of it. Kind of like an engagement present to ourselves.”

“That’s assuming we miss our plane,” Bucky said.

“Of course. After all, we’re making all due haste to get on board.” On their left, a ninety-year-old man who had abstained from using the moving sidewalk was passing them.

“All due haste,” Bucky murmured. He leaned back into Steve’s chest, and Steve wrapped his arms around him. “Okay, if we miss this plane. A day in Paris.”

“A day in Paris,” Steve agreed, “then the rest of our lives, wherever we want.” They were planted in the center of the moving sidewalk, the crowds shifting around them. They were nearly there, Steve thought. Nearly to the end of the line. And when they got there, he was going to marry the man in his arms. He brushed a kiss against the side of Bucky’s neck, and together, they watched the gate agent close the doors to the jetway.

**Author's Note:**

> This work was created for the 2018-2019 Stucky AU Big Bang. Thank you to the mods for creating a platform where authors and artists could collaborate and share their work!
> 
> The art in chapters 5 and 7 was created by Grace, the best pinch-hit artist, beta reader, moral supporter, ranting buddy, supersoldier co-parent, and all-around partner in crime a girl could ask for. She would like it stated for the record that she's not officially an artist.
> 
> Really, she's amazing, you should check her out [here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracelesso/pseuds/gracelesso/works).
> 
> Questions, comments, and kudos are always, always appreciated. Up-to-date contact info in my profile. Come say hi!


End file.
